March 2019 March AIRLINE FLEET FLEET AIRLINE PLANNING SPACEFLIGHT IN 2019 SENSORS GEN NEXT WHY CONCORDE REMAINS 50 AN ICON AT SPEEDBIRD SALUTE TO THESALUTE TO www.aerosociety.com AEROSPACE March 2019 Volume 46 Number 3 Royal Aeronautical Society Don’t forget to renew your membership subscription for 2019 Any unpaid memberships will lapse on 31 March 2019 As per the Society’s Regulations, all How to renew: memberships will be suspended where a payment for an individual subscription has Online: Log in to your account on the Society’s not been received after three months of the website to pay at: due date. This excludes members paying their www.aerosociety.com/login annual subscriptions by Direct Debit in monthly instalments. 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Contents Correspondence on all aerospace matters is welcome at: The Editor, AEROSPACE, No.4 Hamilton Place, London W1J 7BQ, UK [email protected] Comment Regulars 4 Radome 12 Transmission The latest aviation and Your letters, emails, tweets aeronautical intelligence, and feedback. analysis and comment. 58 The Last Word 10 Antenna Keith Hayward looks back at Role reversal Howard Wheeldon considers the legacy of Herb Kelleher, Airbus’ Brexit warning to founder of low-cost carrier the UK. pioneer Southwest Airlines. Some 50 years ago a battle between speed and size took off with the Atlantic Ocean separating rival contenders for the future of air travel. In Europe, Aérospatiale and BAC gambled that passengers and airlines would Features NASA/SpaceX demand Concorde to whisk them to destinations at twice the speed of Leonardo sound. Over in the US, Boeing, originally envisaging the 747 as an interim 24 airliner on the way to higher speeds, found that its Jumbo Jet became a revolution in getting the world to fly. Half a century later, the 747 has carried over 5.9bn people – or the equivalent of 78% of the world’s population. Yet Concorde, with a handful built and doomed by overflight restrictions and the 70’s oil crisis, now lives on only in museums and in the imagination. Today, 18 Scanning for the new ironically, the roles are reversed with Europe’s aerospace champion, Airbus age of radar Leonardo is developing a new range of having failed in its bet that ‘bigger is better’ with the A380 superjumbo. Space 2019 lightweight radar systems Meanwhile across the Atlantic, speed is back with NASA pushing forward The RAeS Space Group look designed for smaller ahead to this year’s plans with low-boom research, Boom developing a 55-seat airliner and Boeing platforms. for manned and unmanned announcing a new partnership with Aerion to bring its AS2 supersonic bizjet space missions. to market. Even John Leahy, Airbus’ recently-retired super-salesman, has 32 Lost in translation been reported as saying that the next big leap in commercial air transport The need for delivering NATS technical content in native will be the return of supersonic flight. Yet, any new SST enters a world far languages. different than its predecessor. Concerns about noise, sustainability, carbon footprints and the excesses of the rich ‘1%’ have magnified over the past 50 years. The real challenges of civil supersonic flight may not be technical barriers but societal, environmental and economic costs. What price are we prepared to pay to get there faster? 22 Tim Robinson, Editor-in-Chief 36 NATS clears AI for take-off at Heathrow Flying the connected [email protected] How UK air traffic service skies provider NATS is testing How commercial aircraft artificial intelligence to could be used to gather NEWS IN BRIEF increase traffic capacity and Earth observation data. Editor-in-Chief Editorial Office Printed by Buxton Press Limited, reduce delays. Tim Robinson Royal Aeronautical Society Palace Road, Buxton, Derbyshire +44 (0)20 7670 4353 No.4 Hamilton Place SK17 6AE, UK [email protected] London W1J 7BQ, UK Distributed by Royal Mail Deputy Editor +44 (0)20 7670 4300 [email protected] 2019 AEROSPACE subscription 41 Afterburner Bill Read rates: Non-members, £170 +44 (0)20 7670 4351 www.aerosociety.com [email protected] AEROSPACE is published by the Royal Please send your order to: Chris Male, RAeS, No.4 Hamilton Place, 42 Message from our President Publications Manager Aeronautical Society (RAeS). London W1J 7BQ, UK. 43 Message from our Chris Male Chief Executive +44 (0)20 7670 4352 +44 (0)20 7670 4352 Sir Brian Burridge CBE FRAeS [email protected] Chief Executive [email protected] Advertising Any member not requiring a print 44 Book Reviews Online Production Editor Bharat Davé version of this magazine, please Wayne J Davis +44 (0)20 7670 4346 contact: [email protected] 49 Library Additions Additional features and content are +44 (0)20 7670 4354 [email protected] [email protected] USA: Periodical postage paid at 50 Obituaries available to view online on www.media. Unless specifically attributed, no Champlain New York and additional aerosociety.com/aerospace-insight Book Review Editor offices. 51 2019 Council Elections Brian Riddle material in AEROSPACE shall be taken Including: to represent the opinion of the RAeS. Postmaster: Send address changes 52 Diary Safety lessons from the Lion Air crash, Airbus Reproduction of material used in this to IMS of New York, PO Box 1518, warns of business impact of a no-deal Brexit, Champlain NY 12919-1518, USA. 55 Whittle Laboratory publication is not permitted without the Heritage Plaque Counter-UAV systems for airports, Leonardo written consent of the Editor-in-Chief. develops a new generation of aircraft radars, ISSN 2052-451X 56 Elections Effect of no-deal Brexit on UK-Europe flights, Planning an aircraft fleet, NATS to use AI technology at Front cover: British Airways’ Concorde. (Newscast) Heathrow. @aerosociety i Find us on LinkedIn f Find us on Facebook www.aerosociety.com MARCH 2019 13 Radome INTELLIGENCE / ANALYSIS / COMMENT Advanced autonomy Unlike previous Mars rovers that are dependent on driving instructions sent via mission control and subject to the 4-20minutes time-lag between Mars and Earth, Rosalind Franklin will incorporate Specifications high levels of navigational autonomy, being able to drive itself between locations selected by scientists. This will speed up Weight 300kg exploration and allow it to travel up to 100m per Martian day. Length 2.5m Height 2m Range 4km Mission duration 218 days Drilling for life The centrepiece of the ExoMars 2020 rover mission is a drill which will be used to probe below the surface of Mars. The drill will be able to penetrate Martian soil down to 2m to extract a core sample for analysis by Rosalind's sophisticated onboard laboratory. Other scientific instruments onboard the rover include infrared spectrometers, ground-penetrating radar and an organic molecule analyser. W SPACEFLIGHT Rosalind to roam Mars On 7 February, the name of ESA's ExoMars rover was announced to be Rosalind Franklin, the British female scientist who played an integral part in the discovery of DNA. The name was chosen after some 35,844 suggestions were sent in, with Rosalind Franklin selected due to the rover's key mission to hunt for life on Mars. The UK-built ExoMars rover, developed by Airbus at its site in Stevenage is now under final assembly and will launch to the Red Planet in July/August 2020 atop a Russian Proton rocket. Touchdown on Mars is set for 2021. 4 AEROSPACE / MARCH 2019 Eyes on Mars The ExoMars rover will feature stereoscopic cameras on top of a 2m mast to help it navigate on the planet by creating digital maps. Close-in-cameras will assist in automatic obstacle avoidance. Solar power Solar panels and batteries will provide power for 50 onboard motors for wheels, mast, drill and cameras. ESA @aerosociety i Find us on LinkedIn f Find us on Facebook www.aerosociety.com MARCH 2019 5 Radome AEROSPACE DEFENCE Mitsubishi fires back in After being on almost constant combat operations since August 1990, the final three RAF Tornados returned from deployment in Cyprus on 5 February to their home base at trade secrets dispute RAF Marham, ahead of the type's retirement from UK service at the end of this month. Operation Shader saw the Tornado force fly around 30,000hrs and release 2,000 Japan's Mitsubishi and certification of the weapons in the fight against ISIS.